All kinds of squirrelly things happen around black holes. I had a research station disappear - and I'm positive I built it at a safe distance. I had other stations at the same hole no problem. Then, I tried to replace the mysteriously vanished station via the editor, and the editor would not place a station anywhere near the hole. I could place ships, so the editor was otherwise working. I think two constructors vanished that game at that location as well; by then I had so many I wasn't sure, and I didn't get an event notice.

1. Explore the black hole. On an unexplored black system hole you can't target the Black hole self.

2. Target the Black hole now. The Black hole self not the System. The targeting ring is the border where ships/stations are geting tow into the hole.

3. select your Const. ship and let it build the station 1-2 cm outside the ring you saw before.

This is good advice, but in my experience the station can be built much farther than that.

What I do to see exactly how far out I can go, is explore the thing, then move my ships out of the way (so I have no visibility on the system) and click on it. Those dashed lines will now appear in the system view and you can then see how much area you have to actually build in. It's huge. I usually build my stations halfway between the edge of the purple swirls of the black hole and where the dashed lines stop.

I also only had problems, when I first tried (right clicking on black hole, build ... here, assuming the constructors know what they are doing) After that the strategy described above worked fine, never missed the bonus.

Kind of interesting was, that this first constructor was auto escorted by a frigate. The frigate was still catching up when the constructor was already pulled into the singularity, so it jumped right into the purple accretion disc. While it was kind of interesting to see the constructor being pulled in, I didnt want to lose the frigate so I tried to order it to another system. And well, after a second it jumped just out (right after adjusting for the direction).

physically it should be able to get away from the accretion disc even without ftl, since it is not beyond the event horizon tempting to try to lure some alien fleet there, chasing after me and then jump out. maybe the next time i attack an alien research lab wait for the relief forces to play with them

The AI has no problem building these stations without my input; it is just slow to build research stations if left on auto.

I would wager that if you told 100 DW players to try to build a research base near a black hole manually, 75 or more would have their ship sucked to its death or fail to get the bonus. I would bet that percentage would be unchanged even if the AI had already built a station near it to show you approximately where to build.

The ships come out of hyperspace incompetently, they move at sublight speeds to their build location incompetently, and the bonus radius, at least to me, isn't easy to spot.

if you tell them to build far enough from the black hole so that said radius will not intersect the black hole's edge, then you do not gain the bonus... if you tell them to build close enough, then there is a good chance of them falling in the black hole by accident...

That's ridiculous. I have never had a construction ship simply FALL in a black hole. The system size is HUGE compared to the actual size of the black hole itself. Unless you are trying to build it in a way that the station is JUST about to fall in, so as to make half the attackers who jump out of warp to try to attack your station promptly get sucked in and die, you should have no difficulty at all.

Incidentally, doing this is very funny, but no one said it had to be easy or necessary.

It should be easy!

The AI has no problem building these stations without my input; it is just slow to build research stations if left on auto.

I would wager that if you told 100 DW players to try to build a research base near a black hole manually, 75 or more would have their ship sucked to its death or fail to get the bonus. I would bet that percentage would be unchanged even if the AI had already built a station near it to show you approximately where to build.

The ships come out of hyperspace incompetently, they move at sublight speeds to their build location incompetently, and the bonus radius, at least to me, isn't easy to spot.

hm, btw can you put labs on a ship? would not be too efficient, with all the propulsion. but at least i would have the ability to refit. and warp away in case of an attack, so less weapons required, or none

I think the idea is cool as well, but I think it would be unneeded fluff tbh. What would they do that isn't already handled better in game? I can't see a reason you would need one other than it is mobile....but that sort of takes away it being useful around a blackhole which requires being near it. Think some major rewrites of code would be needed? Don't get me wrong, I think science vessels are neat, but they just don't seem to fit into a game like this.

I think the idea is cool as well, but I think it would be unneeded fluff tbh. What would they do that isn't already handled better in game? I can't see a reason you would need one other than it is mobile....but that sort of takes away it being useful around a blackhole which requires being near it. Think some major rewrites of code would be needed? Don't get me wrong, I think science vessels are neat, but they just don't seem to fit into a game like this.

1. Mobile means it can escape the enemy. 2. Upgradeable is awesome all around. 3. Upgrade costs are JUST the cost of components, a component costs 8x the cost of all its individual materials that make it... If you need 3 units of gold and 1 unit of steel, and the price of gold is 2 credit per unit and steel is 1 credit per unit, then (2*3 + 1)*8 = 56... if your upgrade is to remove 3 components and replace them with 3 of that then you pay 56*3 = 168 only... (retiring at a spaceport and building new is sometimes cheaper because you get a percentage of the cost back... so an upgrade that replaces every single component of the ship costs like an entirely new ship, and you don't get back the cost of retiring)

It would be very beneficial to part those at a black hole and have them actively ESCAPE an enemy instead of dying... It might actually make them cheaper because you could remove all the weapons...

Wow. almost two years later and I'm here searching this forum to the answer to the same question.

Oh well, I seem to try this game about once a year, then give up in frustration at it. The game has promise. But it also is just so painful in that they can't seem to make stuff like this work.

At a planet, you click on the planet, and the base gets built in orbit around the planet. The emperor doesn't have to calculate the correct place to click to put the base to keep it from falling into the gravity well of the planet. A black hole should be the same. You click on it, when you say 'build a base' at the black hole, the engineers figure out where it needs to go. I'm supposed to be the bleeping emperor in this game, not an engineer pulling out a tape measure and measuring one to two cm on a computer screen to find the place.

Arrgh, just more aggravating stuff that would have been fixed in the first beta copies if this was a real game. I guess I'll come back in another year or so to see if anyone ever fixes this game to the point where it doesn't bleep.

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Guard against the impostures of pretended patriotism. ~George Washington

We all suffer from the "having gotten used to the work-around" - in this case you order the station to be built through the constructor (select it, then right click on black hole -> build research station here). The constructor knows the distance...

OR you select the black hole, then order a research (or resort) station built through the "order" buttons on the bottom of the detail-window...

I still don't understand the issue, 2 years down the line and I've still never, ever lost a ship, base or anything to a Black Hole. Since Legends it is even easier. Click black hole, click build research base (or resort base), job done.

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"My body may be confined to this chair, but my mind is free to explore the universe" - Stephen Hawking

I still don't understand the issue, 2 years down the line and I've still never, ever lost a ship, base or anything to a Black Hole. Since Legends it is even easier. Click black hole, click build research base (or resort base), job done.

One of the first things I did in a new Legends game (v12 Beta pach) was to order a construction ship to build a research station at a Black Hole. Did it just like you said. And it fell in. LOL. Personally I don't understand all the angst around this issue. If all the danger is removed from building things around Black Holes, then they are no different from any other generic item in game. If you want the bonus, there should be some danger involved and there's not THAT many of these to make the increased micromanagement bothersome. The real oddity is that I can build things right on top of a neutron star and suffer no issues whatsoever - the gravity coming from those babies is not insignificant!

Since the RotS navigation buttons were introduce, I've never lost a ship. Before, when I had to select a construction ship, right click the black hole, I had to be really careful. This was fun as I enjoyed the element of risk.

Nowadays, it's just click the potential research locations button, click the build research station button and that's my research taken care of. I preferred the old way.

I still don't understand the issue, 2 years down the line and I've still never, ever lost a ship, base or anything to a Black Hole. Since Legends it is even easier. Click black hole, click build research base (or resort base), job done.

One of the first things I did in a new Legends game (v12 Beta pach) was to order a construction ship to build a research station at a Black Hole. Did it just like you said. And it fell in. LOL. Personally I don't understand all the angst around this issue. If all the danger is removed from building things around Black Holes, then they are no different from any other generic item in game. If you want the bonus, there should be some danger involved and there's not THAT many of these to make the increased micromanagement bothersome. The real oddity is that I can build things right on top of a neutron star and suffer no issues whatsoever - the gravity coming from those babies is not insignificant!

I fully agree with both you and Igard! Much of the fun for me in playing DW is not trying to micromanage everything to "the perfect outcome"......its to play the game and experience the various events that make the game interesting. Risk and unknown factors are what I enjoy playing through.

Since the RotS navigation buttons were introduce, I've never lost a ship. Before, when I had to select a construction ship, right click the black hole, I had to be really careful. This was fun as I enjoyed the element of risk.

Nowadays, it's just click the potential research locations button, click the build research station button and that's my research taken care of. I preferred the old way.

We can still do it the old way as well, no? Haven't been in the game in a looong time but I suspect it's still doable.